


Mantel

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [26]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: (we deliver!), Ace GETS a hug, Ace needs a hug, Arguments, Buckle Up Kids We're Going To The Feels Place, Gen, Puppy Piles, emotional catharsis, secondary breeders/breeder court - Freeform, shouting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 21:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5064022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Mantel</b> — A climbing move in which downward pressure is applied with the hands to a ledge, lifting the body high enough to get the feet on that same ledge. Usually used when no handholds are available.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>When Ace finally felt ready to talk to Furiosa, it was late afternoon. His thoughts had been churning through his head ever since he'd first seen her, injured and weak, in her quarters. Ever since she'd told him about her escape plan, but the added hurt of knowing how much she'd confided in the Wastelander had brought things to a boil. He had never confronted her before, always trusted that what she did was in his best interest.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Until now.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Mantel

There was a cushion on the window ledge.

Max was here earlier to see if Furiosa was in her quarters - she wasn’t - and the ledge he’d slept on before was empty, free for him to claim. Now it was occupied by a cushion like one that the crew spread around the edge of Furiosa’s mattress to make space for themselves. Had one of the people he’d brought back claimed the space?

“You know, I never used to have cushions,” Furiosa said from the mattress. Kompass and Austeyr had installed her there and left again. She looked exhausted enough that Max figured she'd actually stay put, too.

“Then this—” she made a vague gesture at the mattress that Max supposed meant _This thing where my crew comes to my quarters at night and piles in around me like lethal puppies_. “Then the cushions started to appear. Still don’t know where they come from.”

She chuckled at the thought, and he wondered how this _had_ started.  

“Got somebody new?” he gestured at the cushion on the ledge.

“No?” she tilted her head at him, then looked back to the ledge. “Ah. I think that’s—" she yawned hugely. "Just somebody noticing you’re back.”

Max pressed at the cushion a bit. Good solidity.

“Think he’s welcoming you as crew.”

“About that…” He glanced at Furiosa quickly, but her gaze held. "Don't think they all agreed on that." From what Max could see, all the crew touched Furiosa constantly, whether it was helping to move her around due to her injuries or acting as a heat source in bed. But that older war boy Ace had just warned him away from her, in the Council room, telling him ‘not to touch her’. Was that what he’d meant? They hadn't seemed to mind him touching her before he'd left for the canyon. Did something change from when Max was here last?

“Never been an issue before,” Furiosa mentioned to the floor with an odd, confused note.

 

* * *

 

When Ace finally felt ready to talk to Furiosa, it was late afternoon. His thoughts had been churning through his head ever since he'd first seen her, injured and weak, in her quarters. Ever since she'd told him about her escape plan, but the added hurt of knowing how much she'd confided in the Wastelander had brought things to a boil. He had never confronted her before, always trusted that what she did was in his best interest.

Until now.

Now he needed answers.

He found her in her quarters. The rest of the crew was occupied with getting the newly arrived Warboys situated, but the Wastelander was in her quarters too, sitting peacefully on his ledge.

"Furiosa," Ace said, standing in the doorway, and the combination of his tone and her name made her straighten up.

Something in her stance reminded him of back when he'd watched her fight in the pits. Ready to take a hit, but more than ready to dish one out.

"It wasn't fair, what you did," he said quietly.

Fair. He hadn't even really known what fairness _was_ , let alone expected it to be applied to him, until she'd gotten the War Rig. Until she'd told him what she needed from him and given him the chance to give it to her.

"It wasn't fair to dump me for being mediocre when you didn't give me the chance to be better."

She opened her mouth, but he fanged it, the words he'd been chewing on for days bubbling up.

"And that makes _sense_ if you just viewed us as the War Boys you worked with, but we was more than that, you was more than'at to us. We was _crew_." He could hear the hurt in his own voice, and rallied.

"An' if we wasn't good enough, if'n I picked the wrong guys, why did you— you should have _said_ so, not let me think it was good enough when it weren't! I was your _Ace_! Why would you let me be _mediocre?_ "

He remembered his nervousness and then his pride at riding for the first time with the crew he'd selected, how pleased he'd been with the performance and how her obvious approval had made him feel funny in his stomach. Had he failed then, or was it later? At which point had she decided she couldn't trust them, not completely, not with this?

She raised her hand as if to speak, but then clenched it into a fist and dropped it again. That just riled him further.

“Where did the lies start? When did you decide we weren't good enough to tell us your plans, but just good enough to serve in them?”

She wouldn't meet his eyes, taking a step back.

"An' I've been breaking my brain over that plan, but there was no version of this where you'd have let us be on your side, was there? If there'd been no storm, if any of us'd survived, would you have just picked us off? Or let those Vuvalini women do it?"

She looked _stricken_. He didn't want her to answer that, so he barged on,

"It weren't _fair_ to us, not to give us the chance, and you know it, and if our thinking was wrong you should have _fixed_ it, you should have _upgraded_ us, not dump us by the roadside like something beyond salvage and drive away with a new crew."

Ace grew quiet and traced the topography of the rock that formed the walls, not able to look at her. She held such power over him, and he _hated_ it, in this moment. Wished she didn't have that ability to reach right into his chest and take what she liked. Wish he didn't still want her to reach in and like what she saw.

"After all— after everything you owed us that much, Boss. An' now we have to work with them, with these widows, and we're supposed to just ignore that you preferred to face the wastelands with five untrained girls and a feral bloodbag?"

A feral bloodbag who knew more about her after three days in her company than Ace had known after close to 2000 days. He still fumed at the thought of it.

"How could you take them instead of us crew that fought with you, that trained with you, that would very well throw themselves in front of anyone gunning for you, _and_ _have_.”

Furiosa sucked in a breath.  

He knew they were both remembering Sprocket.

His throat hurt, his chest hurt, and his ribs were _healed_ , near enough to not matter, he wasn't sure why it was so hard to breathe, why he felt like she was punching his ribs with her chrome hand when she was just standing there, not sayin' anything. He focused his eyes on the window. It was easier to speak that way.

"You should have let us know you, you should have let _me_ know you," he said, because that hurt, that in all that time and for all their closeness, for all what he'd _thought_ was closeness, he hadn't apparently _known_ her. Had known a version of her that didn't exist.

He remembers that time she’d went back to their Gastown lodgings drunk, how she shared her drink and made them all feel sacred, was there any truth to that memory as it existed for Ace? Was that moment so shallow to her?

“I let you know as much as I could,” she said distantly.

"AND I KNOW THAT!" he burst out, frustrated, the words bouncing through the room. "I know that you felt you had no choice and that makes _sense_ but Boss, you claimed me, you claimed us, you _bound_ us to you! We should have been given the _chance_." he wheeled on her and abruptly deflated, because her face was the same familiar Imperator's face, hard and unyielding, but her cheeks were wet with tears. She was leaning against the wall as if it was holding her up.

Max was still on the window ledge, watching them both with alertness, but showing no signs of interfering, no censure for either side.

“You knew us, or I thought you knew us. I don’t know anymore… Aren’t cha going to say _anything_?”

He wanted her to shout back, he wanted to hear her defend her choices, but instead she just stood there and took his shouting, and that didn't _help_ that made him _angrier_ , it made him feel _smaller_ , because part of him knew. Remembered the V8 signs and the eager looks at learning she'd had the honour of the Immortan's regard. Remembered how she'd seemed to shrink. Remembered the distance after moments like that, when he'd told himself that she was hurt, sad, remembering. In hindsight maybe what he'd seen in her eyes in moments like those was betrayal.

But he wanted to hear her _say it_ and remove all doubt because so much misunderstanding happened between them with her silence. He needed her own true words to reorient his memories, because the idea of relearning her and once _again_ finding his memories false was something he didn't think he could come back from.

Ace made for the door, intending to slam it shut behind him loudly enough to drive his point home. But his last glance back, already in the doorway, showed him a glimpse of her face, the suddenly crumpled expression, twisting and hurt like he'd never seen before, and he stopped, stalked back over.

He'd never before felt like he towered over her, never wanted to, but the way she looked up at him now was— he didn't _want_ this, he wanted things to be _normal_ between them, but he no longer had any idea of what that was.

He huffed out an angry breath and knocked his forehead against hers, a little harder than he'd intended. She breathed in like she hadn't in a while, and he couldn't— couldn't look at her right now, wanted to keep hold of his anger, so he threw a look at Max, who to his frustration seemed to understand her even without all these words, and left.

He wanted to punch somebody, get in a scrap to flush some of the anger outta his fuel lines, but Ace was old and wise enough to know what his ribs could take.

 

* * *

 

His skin felt tight and angry, like it was too small for his body, and he could tell his face was like a sandstorm from the way people made space for him in the hallways. He'd had no plan on where to go, but found himself go in the direction of the Altar room, needing its quiet so he could _think_.

He didn't get that far.

There was a group of ten, eleven warboys ahead of him, clustered in the narrow hallway. There were two yellow-painted boys in the mix, and another few new faces that must have just arrived with the Wastelander. When Ace came closer he realised they were surrounding two breeders. The young women were standing pressed together, their faces tight, and this was not good, not at all how things were meant to be now.

They hadn't noticed him yet, so he quietened his steps until he joined the back of the group, half a head taller than any of them.

"—not like you have a job now, is it?" one of the warboys said. "We all gotta earn our keep."

"Come on, why you're suddenly all difficult about this?"

"They said—" the stockier young woman looked down, then up at the warboys, "they said we didn't have to, anymore." Ace saw that her shoulders were loose, and angled, and her weight forward on her feet, but she was floating too high on her heels and it would be easy to sweep her or just lift her straight up. She must’ve had a couple lessons that the Vuvalini seemed to be holding, but War wasn’t learned in a day.

“Polaris! D-don’t, make them angry," the other woman whispered, "it’s not like we don’t… you know it’s easier if you don't fight it.”

“Maybe I don’t want easy,” Polaris said, “I’ve done ‘easy’ and it’s not gotten us anywhere. Marienny said them up there have said 'Only if you want to' and _I don't want to_.”

She spotted Ace at the back of the group, and her eyes widened.  

“They did say that,” he said, soft and low, the kind of voice that made all the warboys spin around to face him.

"The Ace!" Lance said, in a voice that wasn't as jovial as he seemed to have intended. "Just in time for a treat, huh? You finally escaped from under the thumb of those wives of Joe? We'll let you breed first!"

Ace's skin was hot and too tight and his whole body _itched_ and he could feel his fist clench. He took a deep breath. Punching Lance right now wouldn't make the women safer, it would put them in the middle of a fight. Of eleven against him in a narrow corridor.

"Nobody's getting bred as don't want to be, and they clearly don't want to be," he said, with an effort not to grind his teeth. Polaris nodded hurriedly in agreement, and after a second, so did the other woman.

“Do you hear that, boys, this is what the Ace says now.” Lance said, and it was almost but not quite mocking. “We gotta listen to what the breeders want. This is what the new Citadel is like, under Imperator Furiosa.”

A noise rose from the ten other war boys, over half of them newly arrived, that almost but not quite sounded like agreement.

“No breeding, no paint, no Tenday... no _War._ ” Lance said, nodding, but he looked like a baby head on a spring, head bobbling in false movement. “Let’s go boys. We’re not wanted here. What was it Kompass said? We can each of us see the truth with our own eyes.”

From what Ace had heard from the pups, the Tenday had been like nothing they’ve had before, but they seemed to take energy from it. He’d met a couple of the injured War boys who’d spoken with rough fondness of the elder and the Tribune who’d attended them, touched base on his own with the black thumbs and green thumbs and all those in between. He’d seen the reactions of his own crew to the truths that the Tribunes and Furiosa laid out about Joe.

But this… this almost traitorous sarcasm. Ace had hoped that all the surviving war boys could just… listen. And hear the ring of truth in the words and the stories. Clearly though, this group hadn’t.

Lance left with his followers, and Ace frowned, especially at the new faces. He needed to speak to Kompass and Austeyr and Rachet, make sure they were spending time with the newly arrived boys, make sure they didn't just let them fall in with people like Lance. He'd been the second of the Ace of Imperator Prime, who’d gotten injured off some stray accident with some thundersticks, and the impression Ace had had of him had been that the War boy was decent at his role. Took care of crew, and good at motivating them. Maybe a little hotheaded, and had always reminded him of Kompass a little and as such Ace would have never thought to hear such insubordination from him.

Maybe it would just take time; and Ace hoped it was simply that, because otherwise it’d meant that they either couldn’t hear truth or that they didn’t _care_. If they couldn’t hear it, then men like the Fixer would be quick to take advantage. If they didn’t care, if a man like Lance didn’t care….

Furiosa was right to have been wary of them.

The two women stayed where they were, giving him uncertain looks as if they weren't sure if they could leave now.

 _They were wary,_ Ace realized, with resignation. Unsure if _he_ was going to make use of this occasion. He took a step back, almost up against the opposite wall, making sure he wasn't blocking them.

"Want me to—" he cleared his throat, "walk with you?"

“We’ll be fine,” Polaris said stiffly. He wasn't sure why her voice reminded him of Kompass all of a sudden, except maybe that he hadn’t touched base with his second since the night of Tenday. Or much of his crew, really.

Ace watched the women walk away and thought the crew were maybe all just waiting on Furiosa. But he remembered the look of those two women just now, and wondered if Furiosa might be waiting on _him_.

It made him sick to his stomach, suddenly, the thought that she might be wary of him. Because he hadn't let himself think that, in those words, whenever he thought about how she didn’t trust him with her plans.

He was thinking about it now. And he couldn’t… he _couldn’t_ let her stay wary of him.

Ace turned and headed back to the room.

 

* * *

 

Max watched in silence as Ace left, as Furiosa slumped down to sit where she'd been leaning against the wall. The look the other man had given him had been a lot like the ones they'd exchanged when she'd been trying to do more than her wounds had allowed, that 'back her up' look.

She was crying now, with the clenched jaw and tight, painfully stifled sobs of somebody who barely remembered how to let the emotion out.

Max quietly moved to sit by her side, his bicep lightly brushing against hers. Offering his presence.

"Hey."

She curled in on herself like she couldn't bear the idea that he was witnessing this. And he’d let the moment grow long.

When he didn't say anything, she gradually let herself sink in his direction, until she could tuck her face against his neck. That’s when he let his arm fall around her. He stroked her back with long, soothing passes, trying to ease the painful hitches in her breath.

He thought he understood that this had been necessary - Ace had needed to say these things, and perhaps Furiosa had needed to hear them, so that she could stop saying them to herself. It didn't seem entirely coincidental that it had happened just after Max had returned

Max wasn't really sure how much time had passed before the door opened again. His head jerked up, worried it would be— the boys, or Gale, or anybody, really, but it was Ace again. He looked _exhausted_.

Furiosa wouldn't, or couldn't, look at him. She still had her face buried against Max's neck, her breath shuddering through her.

Ace closed the door behind him and stood there for long moments, large hands clenching and unclenching. Then finally he came toward them, went to his knees before Furiosa. She turned her head on Max's shoulder to look at him, seeming almost fearful of what she'd see.

"I want to think," Ace finally began, mouth moving silently as if struggling to get the words out, "that we woulda helped you, just like that. Because you're our Boss. But—" his hand made an abortive gesture toward hers. "—truth is until Joe was dead - really wasn't immortal - I don't know that all of'us would've. I just wish I coulda… coulda been there for you."

Her eyes spilled over.

"Boss," Ace said, voice hoarse. "Just give me the right specs to this thing, please. Am I your Ace?"

Max had finally worked out that Ace wasn't so much a title as it was a job description, referring to the person an Imperator trusted most. Ace's consternation earlier, when he'd been surprised Max had known about Joe, must have been related to that. It stood to reason that she could only make him her Ace again if she were willing to speak truth to him.

 

* * *

 

Furiosa didn't move, and Ace worried that she might not answer at all. Then she straightened, no longer curling into the Wastelander, though his arm stayed around her. She looked up at Ace as if it pained her.

"Do you— do you _want_ to be?" she looked away. She looked as if this was _shredding_ her. "I'd understand if you— After I—"

" _Yes_ ," Ace said fervently, almost a growl, leaning in.

She blindly reached out, her hand landing on his forearm, and squeezed.

"I—" her voice cracked, and she started again, a hoarse whisper. "I was afraid." The admittance felt giant in the room, none of them easy with showing weakness and this was almost difficult to look at. Max stopped breathing for a moment.

Ace felt her words like a punch to his solar plexus, breathless and harsh, but he nodded, taking it in.

"After I…” she twitched her eyes away, “got you, got the guys.. it was more than I ever thought…” She edged away from them some more as if needing more space for saying so, “I'd been alone, and then suddenly not. To have you looking out for me, so that I could have a moment to sleep."

Ace remembered the first times she'd slept near him, how she'd woken up what must have been every half hour at least. Only now thought about how much harder it must have been for her to sleep when she was a warboy quartered in the barracks.

He remembered the night she'd let them all taste the liquor, at the Bullet Farm. Was that— had that been the first night she'd slept properly, in years? Maybe even since she'd been taken from that Green Place of hers?

“It— It was so _good_.." she took a deep, shuddering breath. "I couldn't bear the thought that you'd— that you'd turn on me when you found out about how I felt about— about—" she clenched her hand into a fist, made a frustrated gesture.

"Joe," Ace said softly.

She nodded, her breath hitching, painful-sounding, and had she always struggled to say that name? Had he mistaken it for reverence? "I tried to forget that it.” She looked down, jaw clenched, fighting to control her breathing, “Was based on a lie. Didn't want it to be. And you were — _kind_ ," her mouth twisted over the incriminating word, as she lost the fight, as Ace looked away, and she choked back a sob, "Y-you let me forget about it. By making sure nobody brought up J—him. It was the kindest thing anybody ever did for me."

Ace swallowed, because he didn't know what to do with the way she saw their shared past, with knowing how wrong he'd been while she was still glad of it. He felt like she ought to be angry, or disappointed, at his mistakes, but she wasn't.

“I saw you trying. Saw the crew trying.” Furiosa said this not turning towards him; Ace saw this from his peripheral vision because he couldn’t even raise his head. “That… that _matters_.”

"But not enough to let us ride with you?"

"Every moment I— I wish I'd known a different way."

Ace let out a long breath, because that was it, the best he was going to get, the best there was available to give. There wasn't anything to undo.

He hated that there had been a lie, but maybe they both did the best they could have done with what they'd had available to them at the time.

He reached out to her, slowly, and she flinched a little, but let him cup the back of her head. He waited until her hand came up, and her touch was a little shaky still, but she was already leaning in, and their foreheads meeting felt a little bit like healing, this time.

Ace couldn't bring himself to move away before she wanted him to, let himself be reassured by being allowed to touch her, by being _welcomed_. Then finally she tugged lightly at his neck, guided him to turn and sit against the wall next to her, so she was between Max and himself. Ace felt his breath shudder out of him at the press of her shoulder, the way she pulled him into her.

"Boss," he croaked, choked with the thought of how _soft_ this was, how she shouldn't have to comfort him, he was her _Ace_ , this wasn't _right_. "I'm sorry, I should've—"

"Shh," she hushed him, hand petting the back of his head. Ace risked a glance at the other man, who was sitting calmly pressed against her other side. Was doing Ace the favour of not looking, not judging. Max seemed no softer for seeking comfort from Furiosa earlier that day; she didn't seem to think less of him, either.

Maybe...

Maybe he could have this? Maybe she wouldn't think less of him for bein' so soft as to need this? He gradually felt his spine ease, head sinking slowly until his cheek was pressed against the side of her head. She made a soothing little noise and then let out a deep sigh, her hand never leaving his head.

At some point Max murmured that he needed to go, and Ace felt her nod, but she didn't let go of Ace for a long time. When she finally made a grumbly sound of discomfort, she moved only to pull him down to the mattress, and he let her arrange him how she liked, still so stunned with suddenly being touched by her again. She put him on his back and curled up into his side, her head on his shoulder, one knee pulled up over both his legs, her arm flung over his chest as if she was afraid he'd slip away.

As if he would possibly want to.

"Missed you," she mumbled into his shoulder.

Ace looked up at the ceiling in silent bewilderment. She.. had... missed him?

"You stopped…" her hand made a vague gesture, "you were always so far."

"I was af— I worried," he managed after a long moment. "That I was readin' you wrong. And then you stopped reaching for me."

"Thought you didn't want to be near me," she whispered, and pressed closer.

He tightened his arms around her, hooked his ankle over hers, pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"I missed you too." He replied quietly. You were… you were not supposed to miss people. It was soft. But things were changing and maybe they could be allowed this.

 

* * *

 

Rachet stopped in his tracks in the door opening, taking in the scene. The Boss and Ace were all tangled up, more even than he remembered seeing Before. He was relatively new to the crew but even Then, whenever they slept close he could see it had the ease of long familiarity.

After the crew’s argument outside of Furiosa’s rooms after Tenday, the guys couldn’t help but be a little awkward around Ace. Rachet had felt it like an uncomfortable conversational pause he'd had no idea of how to fill; he had noticed how Kompass moved more stiltedly around the man, and he wasn’t sure if either of them had realized that he was almost mirroring how their Boss was around Ace as well. He had seen Kompass opening his mouth as if to speak to Ace when Ace was turned away, but then turning away angrily and going to confer to Austeyr or him instead, about speaking to this or that faction or about preparations around the Citadel.

Rachet had felt a little odd about it, even if a kinda honored; he’s an older war boy, but young for crew, why was Kompass turning to him? He didn’t know as much as Austeyr about Citadel workings and people frequently frustrate him.

But a few days ago Kompass asked him to lead the expedition to the underground mall, and even though the whole thing made his spine _itch_ and feel exposed, Rachet really wanted to help out. As the Boss’ crew, the crew of the Imperator who’d bested Joe, they now outranked everybody living at the towers. So like it or not… even Rachet has to lead. At least he wasn’t made to run around and _talk_ to people like Austeyr’s had to.

Then again, Aus kinda liked talking so it probably worked out.

Rachet had lost track of Ace in the interim, bringing back supplies from the mall and sorting it all out with Stuffs and the Repair boys and whatever needed patching. The older war boy seemed to patrol around the breeders and milkers, around the council members, almost as if at loose ends. And when they’d bedded down at night seemed to hold himself aloof from the rest of them snugged together on the bed, where Furiosa seemed to hold herself more stiffly if Ace was in the room.

So this current closeness with Furiosa looked new, they hadn't been this tangled up in a while.

Rachet nodded, pleased. _They've made up, then_.

He went over to place the bottle of milk he'd been tasked with bringing by her side. Looked at the duo, thinking, and then shoved himself up against Ace’s other side. The warboy had looked like he’d needed a bit of being squished, but there was nobody else in the room. Ace looked at him sideways but seemed to relax into it.

Furiosa smiled at Rachet across Ace's chest, and his insides did something funny. Squirmed a bit and then settled, like he’d hadn’t felt since they’d ridden out on that milk and produce run so very many days ago.

 

* * *

 

Kompass discovered that in their absence, apparently the Boss had forgiven Ace. They were curled up together in a way that looked— that looked soft, but if the Boss were doin' it it couldn't be wrong, she wouldn't do that to her Ace.

Austeyr came in behind him and made a 'huh' sound.

Furiosa made a beckoning gesture, and Kompass realised they'd been hovering in the doorway. Austeyr was already moving towards her when he glanced back, rolled his eyes, and dragged Kompass after him.

 

* * *

 

Ace could feel Furiosa gather herself, once they were all settled in around her. As if she were about to leap. She clearly had something to say. He petted her head lightly, hoping it might help her feel ready to say whatever was on her mind.

"I'm sorry I— I didn't know another way," she finally said softly into the sounds of their quiet breathing. Ace could feel Rachet tense up, clearly uneasy with the Boss apologising, and he patted the younger man. Furiosa continued haltingly, "It wasn't— it wasn't your fault that I couldn't—that you didn't know."

" _Boss_ ," Austeyr protested sadly, a little helpless.

"I'm grateful that I had you."

" _Have_ us," Kompass rumbled, his face pressed against the back of her neck. “Don’t need to apologize, the whole thing was…”

“Messed up? Broken?” Rachet suggested.

"It's better now," Ace decided.

It would be. It had to be.


End file.
